‘When you begin to dream about something that you really like and work hard to achieve it, nothing comes in the way till you are attached with a string of your dream. Let it be there always!’
After working as an employee in ibibo, I decided to join my own venture with the help of my wife, Arti Sharma. Arnit Retail Pvt. Ltd is the parent company of IndiaRush which we started as an e-commerce portal to cater home decor and electronic products. But with passing time, struggle and a lot of arduous effort, we decided to start with apparels, accessory, jewellery and footwear business.
Since my college days, I was into mobile marketing and website development. I joined ibibo.com as a software engineer in the mobile department to develop smart games for their app users. It was then when got a zest to start my own entrepreneurship because at that time social media was at its peak. And since 2012, the company has been successfully working on bootstrapping strategy.
Now in 2017, we can boast with a team of more than 100 employees and a separate team for different cores and skill set. Now it seems magical when I remember the days when the company had a team of 5 members. It is very important to have members with decided skill set and core knowledge. I started my career with an IT background but it becomes very important to be a ‘jack of all trades, master of none’ because you need to instil your suggestions, involvement and decisions when everyone moves on the edge of task accomplishment.
Relationship with Customers & Sellers
During our initial days, we started with home decor and electronics but in 2015, we have shifted our market interest to apparels and clothing for women and men. Now, we are in a position to grab successful orders worth Rs 20 Crores with more than 80K orders. Yes, the graph changes and varies according to the market interest and value of money. IndiaRush caters a wide range of women apparels such as lehenga, kurti, salwar suits, saree, footwear, jewellery, and other accessories. You can also feed your posh taste buds with branded watches available for men and women. Well, the management of products and vendors took almost a year to settle down. We have more than 8000 sellers and vendors on board with us and a huge team of logistics and MIS to support us.
In 2016, we launched our very own private label – Inddori which promotes our ideated designs and in-trend styles of apparels. At the end of the fiscal year, it gave us 15% of total sales and well received by the customers. We set it like that to match the budget of the customers and suit their daily posh styles. Adding on more, we have also launched a separate social platform where customers can post their picture, write captions and win likes.
Our Sync with Marketing Strategy
Since we are running successfully with bootstrapping strategy, we take the privilege to highly appreciate our in-built intelligence team. It adds to the assets of the company by instilling core skill set and knowledge to overall functions. During our initial days, we were more focused on ROI and not profit but with growing age and when the marketplace demands your height, you also put forward the demand of focussing on profit.
One thing that I think is positive on being non-privileged of fundraising is that you are not answerable to anyone of your decisions and the time lap. You create your path as you like it and can craft things according to your time set and capability. And the drawback of taking the other side is we have to cut short expenditures on marketing or promotions. We have created a line of expenditure but it never goes down or up.
Our users are now 1.5 lacs per day with 10K+ visitors per day on Fashion Blog. To increase the user engagement, we have also launched India’s first digital magazine – EDITS in October 2016.
In nutshell, the tougher is your journey, more skill set you will carry on your back for future. And there is never an ending for a room for improvement in any entrepreneurial session.